AFI Collection at the Library of Congress

When film was in its infancy, movies were shot on volatile nitrate stock that disintegrated in short time. There are estimates that more than 50 percent of the films shown before 1950 are lost forever. In 1968, among AFI's first acts was to establish the AFI Collection at the Library of Congress — a secure repository in Washington, DC, for thousands of cinema classics. AFI rallied the studios to donate copies of their highest quality prints, and to this day, 60,000 films from the first half-century of the art form are secure in the AFI Collection.